The sun woke Michael. Streaming in through the bedroom window. His first thought was, I'm late for the 8 o'clock meeting with Helmut. His second thought was, What kind of a partyboy gives all-night parties, but expects his guests to get up at the crack of dawn?

But his third, and final, thought was, If it were up to me, I would wake up like this everyday, Nikita's arms lovingly wrapped around me. He lay on his side facing her, a faint but crooked smile etching his fine features. "Kita…he breathed, trying to wake her very gently. He wanted to see the look in her beautiful blue eyes as she first awoke.

"Hmm?" she mumbled as she rubbed a finger across the end of her nose.

Her eyes opened suddenly, their gaze so forthright, so terribly blue, it sent a frisson of electricity down his spine. Her eyes softened immediately as she registered Michael's face. "Good morning."

"It is, isn't it?" he answered, wondering how he could feel so free. They were still imprisoned within Section's clutches. To make things worse, the villain of the piece kept trying to hit on Michael. Every chance he got. Once Kita obtained the information on Helmut's next drug shipment, they would both be forced to return to Section. Yet none of it mattered.

"We've got to meet Helmut," Nikita reminded Michael, her heart clearly not in the reminder.

Michael's heart sank. Did he dream it or did it really happen? Had he finally acknowledged the depth of his love for Nikita? And if he had, he thought frustratedly, why didn't she say something?

As if she were reading his mind, Nikita dropped her gaze to his mouth. Rubbing the outline of his lips with her thumb, she whispered, "I had a dream last night. You said certain things to me."

Echoes of the past. Echoes of the aftermath of Lyons.

With one compelling difference.

Michael was not going to disavow the words he'd spoken in the heat of passion. Because they were true. And he wanted, no, needed her to know that. There would be no more manipulation of the truth about how they felt about each other.

"I love you, Kita." There. He'd said it. In the light of day. On a mission. In the home of the target. With sunlight weaving random patterns on the expensive wall-to-wall carpeting.

"I didn't dream it." She sounded perplexed.

"No."

"You're not trying to deny it."

"No."

She frowned, her pale brows knitting together in frustration. "Michael, you always said we couldn't be together because Madeline and Operations would see the truth in our eyes. In the way we looked at each other."

Michael smiled slowly, his hand touching her cheek. "They've already seen us, Kita. They don't like it. But they can't do anything about it."

"Because of Adrian."

He nodded.

"Maybe we're putting way too much faith in Adrian and her usefulness, Michael." Nikita looked vaguely disquieted by what she'd just said.

"We'll see."

"Michael, Helmut is waiting. On the shooting range." But this time her warning was clearly not meant to be taken as read. She giggled merrily, her laughter so infectious, Michael joined her.

"Maybe he'll have an accident," Michael suggested.

Nikita raised an eyebrow, demonstrating what she thought of that idea. "Maybe you'll help him, you mean. Michael, let's not do anything stupid."

"I'm incapable of doing anything stupid this morning, Kita. It's the morning after we made love." The tenderness in his voice underscored just how much he really meant that.

"We've made love before, Michael," she chided him.

"Not like this. Not with both of us knowing exactly how we feel. At the same time." He kissed her, his lips reluctant to leave hers. "No power plays, Kita. We're on the same page for once. Tell me how that makes you feel."

She smiled coyly. "Like…Helmut can wait."

He feathered light kisses across her brow, her nose, her cheeks. An obvious prelude to other, more intimate things.

A peremptory rap at their bedroom door broke the spell. "Freddy? What's keeping you? Don't tell me you cannot get away from the spirited Anna…she is, after all, just a woman…"

Michael stared intently into Nikita's bright blue gaze. "Not just a woman, Helmut," he whispered. "My woman."

Michael and Nikita eventually made their way to the shooting range. But Helmut might have wished they had stayed in bed. Despite his obvious designs upon Nikita.

Michael could not resist playing with Helmut, just a little, and his act of innocence made Nikita smile. No one could have predicted the look of amazement on Helmut's face when Michael accurately shot down the mock Eiffel Tower. Apparently without even aiming.

Michael shrugged, an insouciant grin on his face. "Beginner's luck."

"I should say so," Helmut agreed, chomping down hard on his cigar. He watched with frustration as Michael and Nikita kissed, right in front of him, their faces framing his. He was so clearly the man in the middle.

Soon afterward, Helmut concluded their business transaction. However, he could not resist a parting shot nor another futile attempt to seduce Michael. "You could grow to like me, if you tried."

"We don't play the same games, Helmut." Michael hated that his voice sounded so curt, but he really didn't have the patience for dealing with Helmut's unwanted sexual advances any longer.

It would take more than a curt remark to deter a man of Helmut's apparent needs and appetites. "How do you know if you've never played before?" Helmut could not quite keep the wistful tone out of his voice.

He was attracted to both Nikita and Michael. He would take whichever one he could successfully bed. But his preference was definitely…

"Freddy…we've gotten off on the wrong foot somehow." Helmut sounded contrite enough, but Michael's expression never changed. He stared back at Helmut disinterestedly.

"I'm not noted for being very good at most things, but I do pride myself on being a good host. Please…stay for brunch." Helmut's entreaty probably hid other, more secret motives. But Michael was obligated to stay until they gained the necessary intel. With a casual gesture, he silently acquiesced, exiting the room to tell Nikita.

It was decided that Nikita would go to Helmut's office to get the necessary intel on the next drug shipment. Michael, on the other hand, had light duty. As Helmut's burgeoning sexual interest indicated, he was easily distracted by Michael's presence.

Nikita laughed as she helped Michael dress for the occasion. Tapping a slender finger to her chin, she said thoughtfully, "Definitely the leather pants, Michael. They make you look so…hot."

Michael wrapped both arms around Nikita's waist and pulled her closer. Several breathless kisses later, they both looked considerably warmer than the ambient room temperature could account for. He nibbled on her lower lip one last time before releasing her.

"You think Helmut will approve?" Michael slowly turned, inviting Nikita's frank appraisal.

"I think Helmut will find you absolutely…delicious." She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. His hands trapped her, preventing her from moving away.

"Mmm…you're the one who's delicious." Michael sighed. "Now how am I supposed to convince Helmut I'm…interested?"

"You, the great Valentine op, are asking me for advice?" Nikita laughed merrily.

"Not really…just…postponing the inevitable, I guess."

"Well…" Nikita produced Michael's sunglasses and fit them over his face. "There you go. Instant fashion statement. You'll be irresistible."

Michael snorted in a very un-Michael-like manner. "I don't want to be irresistible to Helmut."

"Only to you," he whispered, stroking her hair back over one ear.

Nikita smiled brightly. "You already are." She tapped the sunglasses. "Besides, this way, he can't see your eyes."

"And what's wrong with my eyes?" Michael asked fiercely.

"Michael…you might have perfected the blank stare, but your eyes are a dead giveaway to what you feel."

"To you, maybe. But surely not to someone who doesn't know me."

She cocked her head at him, studying the overall picture he made. "Well, if Helmut is as shallow as he appears to be, he won't be looking at your face anyway, Michael. He's never going to get beyond the leather pants." Nikita smirked, clearly bemused by Michael's discomfiture at being the object of Helmut's desire.

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Michael exuded sex appeal, and of course, he made the perfect bait to catch a fish such as Helmut. Exaggerating his strut while slowing it down at the same time, Michael hit upon the best combination to win Helmut's undivided attention. Helmut did indeed find Michael fascinating, though it probably had more to do with his hidden agenda than anything else.

"Helmut? Can we talk?"

"Absolutely, Freddy. I'm hanging on your every word, dar-ling." Helmut seemed to drawl that last word in a most provocative manner. One calculated to make one think of smoke and sex and mystery.

Michael winced inwardly. There were few people he would permit such liberties, and Helmut was not one of them. Thinking back to when Nikita was role-playing and called him 'darling' made him smile. He couldn't help it.

Helmut smiled back, evidently thinking Michael was responding to his charm. "Ah, now we're getting somewhere, eh, Freddy?" He dared to touch Michael's arm, and Michael was damn glad he was wearing dark glasses. He just knew that his eyes would reveal more than he wanted.

"It's about Anna," Michael began.

"Mmm, yes, I imagine almost everything is."

Nikita was just putting back the documents she had photographed when Helmut entered the office. Though she was certain she had not been seen, Helmut was clearly suspicious of her. But not for the reason she thought.

"When are you going to tell me the truth?"

It was all she could do not to react to Helmut's inquiry. Did he know something? If so, what? "About what?" she asked, trying to sound casual.

"That you're not hopelessly in love with Freddy."

Nikita smiled, partly with considerable relief at not being found out. "Well…"

Within moments, Nikita was flustered again. She didn't know why, but somehow Helmut seemed to think she would make a splendid candidate for the position of wife. Of course, it was hardly the romantic proposal a girl dreamed of, but he had his reasons.

"My father is despicably wealthy. I stand to inherit more money than you could even imagine. But…" he sighed heavily, "a codicil to his will states that I must be married."

Nikita tried to evade what was coming, but it came at her with an inevitability she could not fight.

"I believe I'm asking you to marry me…" Helmut waited expectantly for an answer. But Nikita was stunned into silence.

Did Madeline know about this? She must have. This was her way of driving an irrevocable wedge between Michael and herself. Since she could not count on either of them to stop their personal relationship, she was forcing the issue. By literally taking Nikita out of the picture.

She didn't know what to say to Michael. He was aware that she had the intel. He was aware that Helmut asked Nikita to marry him. But she didn't know how he felt about that.

After the debacle in the debriefing, it became painfully obvious what was going to transpire. Nikita was being forced into marriage with Helmut Volker, ostensibly to establish an ongoing information exchange between Section and Red Cell. But no matter what the reason, it meant that she might never see Michael again.

That was the part that she could not bear to think about.

The church was deserted save for the two people in black. Though they were not in fact mourners for a funeral, there was a melancholy air about both of them. And perhaps they were mourning something…the death of their relationship. Their ill-starred love affair that seemed doomed from the start.

"It's one thing to pretend to love another man…" Nikita's voice was full of tears unspent. Michael closed his eyes briefly. His own pain, so chronic as to pass unnoticed by him, paled in significance next to hers. He expected to lose. He was rarely disappointed. But Nikita hoped. She always held onto that tiny sliver of hope. That was what broke his heart.

"…enough to marry him…"

Michael's grey-green eyes flickered over her face. She was not crying. Yet.

"But the thought of never seeing you again…" That was it. Unthinkable. Unbearable. She refused to look at him, as if the very sight of him hurt her eyes.

"You have to separate Anna's life from Nikita's." His eyes so sad, Michael was beyond mere tears. He had fallen into a space where there was no air to breathe. For Nikita was as necessary to him as breathing. Without her, he could not go on.

"Is that what you did, with Elena?"

"I tried." I tried, Nikita. Tried and failed. How could I not come to love the mother of my only child in this world? How could I justify still wanting you and needing you to survive? Still, I tried.

"Then you still believe, even after everything you went through, that it's possible to hold onto your heart?"

"Yes." His answer was terse, in that sibilant whisper she had come to associate with Michael's most heartfelt emotions.

"We'll find a way to stop this."

We. He said we. Not I. We. Is there a 'we' after today, Michael? What's going to happen to us? What if we can't?

That last sentence, she must have spoken aloud, because a moment later, Michael answered her. "We have to." He was dangerously close to breaking down, but he held on, for it would do neither of them any good.

He ached to hold her, comfort her, but she might as well have been miles away. He wanted to beg her to remember him, to remember that he loved her. But more than that…

He wanted her to remember that she loved him.

Nikita didn't want to say goodbye to Michael. She didn't think she could maintain the professional detachment necessary to carry out her orders if she touched him. If she let him touch her. She knew she couldn't. She didn't have his strength or his control.

But in the end, Michael thwarted her. Just as she left her apartment, for the very last time, he rounded the corner in her hallway. They came face-to-face outside her door. Michael thought he had a way to stop the wedding from ever taking place.

By tracing the number to Helmut's cell phone, Michael would be able to piggyback onto any incoming signal and find out the exact time of the proposed arms shipment. Once that shipment was sabotaged, Red Cell would blame Helmut. Making the marriage pointless. If the plan worked.

They conversed in low tones, like the trained operatives they were. But, unable to move away in time, Nikita was trapped by Michael's hand on hers. Raising startled eyes to his, she shook her head almost imperceptibly. She couldn't look into his eyes and say goodbye. The thought of never seeing him again was too much for her heart to bear.

"Please…don't."

"Don't what?" He caressed her hand, feeling how icy cold her fingers were now. Anxious? Frightened? Heartbroken? Like him?

"Don't touch you?" Don't make it easier for you to walk away? Easier for you to leave me behind? Easier for you to…forget?

He couldn't voice everything he felt. It hurt to breathe. It was as if he had looked into the future and knew that Nikita no longer belonged only to him. He had to succeed. Because she had to come back. To him.

He rubbed the ring finger of her left hand with his thumb. She looked down at their joined hands and sighed helplessly. "I wish…I could—"

She cut him off with two fingers to his lips, stopping him from completing that sentence. It was not casual between them. It never had been. It never could be. But if Michael said what she thought he wanted to say…she would never leave him.

"I know," she whispered.

He leaned his forehead against hers, his eyes half-closed. He couldn't hold onto her just because he needed her to survive. She had to do what she had to do. Just as he had once. It didn't mean she didn't love him.

It didn't mean that.

His lips slid across hers, lightly, gently. This was no time for passion. Heartache lay too close to the surface for both of them.

I love you. His heart wept.

Remember.

The device Michael had given Nikita worked as planned. The cell phone's number was captured. Just the way they needed. Nikita tried not to think about what followed immediately afterward. If Michael only knew…

But then…Michael did know. It was part of what was breaking his heart. The thought of her being with someone else. She took off her clothes and she slept with Helmut. Yet if her body was physically present, her heart and soul were not. They were clasped tightly to her. She refused to give them up. They belonged to Michael. And no one else.

Helmut was nice enough. For the man he was. But when he kissed her, she closed her eyes, not in passion, but in an effort to shut out his face. So close to hers. He was the wrong man. He had the wrong touch.

His fingertips were not slightly roughened, so that they abraded her softness with a delicious sandpapery texture. His moustache was neatly trimmed. But the rest of him was cleanshaven. Wrong, all wrong, her heart cried, echoing her mind. Where was the light stubble that rubbed ever so gently against her cheeks, her lips, turning them pink and swollen?

The moment Helmut moved down the length of her body, she shut down all reasonable thought. He was a caring lover. He tried to please her. And it was so obvious that he thought he did. But when it was over, she had the sensation of having gritted her teeth throughout the entire interlude. Her jaw ached. It was worse than feeling nothing, this inner pang. This was not the pleasant throbbing that accompanied good lovemaking. This was the pain that came with bad infection, inflaming her whole body.

It was rejection, plain and simple.

Still, Helmut was happy. Nikita forced herself to lay quietly in his arms for several moments, though she longed to leap out of bed and scald his touch from her body with a shower too hot to bear. Michael's image was so strong, so compellingly real to her tortured mind, she was afraid she would utter his name. Still, she clung to that image. Memories might be all she would have to live on. Unless Michael succeeded.

But then…when had Michael ever failed? Hope flared into brilliant life again in her heart. Michael would not fail. He could do anything.

Michael stared at the semi, stopped at the gate. It was on its way out of Helmut's plant. Loaded with arms. For Red Cell.

Michael passed several anxious moments, watching the timer tick off the seconds left to detonation. It never occurred to him that Section might have provided for his interference. Michael was so often two or three steps ahead of Operations, he had grown a bit complacent.

As the seconds spiraled down to zero, Michael stopped looking at the timer and focused on the semi itself. Come on…he prayed. He cleared his mind of superfluous thought. The idea of Nikita sleeping with someone else at this point in their affair tormented him. But the idea of Nikita marrying someone else and being forever lost to him was a pain beyond endurance. Desperate to succeed, he was superstitious enough to believe that if he allowed himself one single What if?, all would be lost.

In his mind's eye, he could already see the explosion. The fiery eruption that would take out the semi, the shipment, and Helmut. Though Helmut was in fact far, far away by now. That didn't matter. He would be disgraced in the eyes of Red Cell, he would disappear from their lives, and Nikita would be returned to him.

The semi began to pull beyond the gate very slowly. Michael's eyes were trained on it. He was utterly still. As if the slightest movement might somehow jinx events.

The timer hit zero with a loud beep. Michael unconsciously braced himself. But the explosion never came.

The semi continued to pull through the gate and down the road, away from the plant, away from Michael. Michael felt a pain in his heart, so sharp, he bit the black leather glove that masked the lower part of his face.

This couldn't be happening.

It was impossible.

There was no time for anything else. Nikita would have to get on the plane to Buenos Aires. To marry Helmut.

Nikita watched the clock. She was all packed and ready to go. Out of Helmut's life. So it was with a heavy heart that she turned and faced Helmut one more time. Her surprise at seeing him, instead of Michael, was badly disguised, and he asked her if something was wrong.

She shook her head, quite numb at the prospects that faced her now. She felt quite unable to breathe normally. Helmut kissed her, and he noted how cold her lips were. "Perhaps you need a heavier coat, my dear Anna."

She nodded absently. The trip to the airport passed in a blur. They were driven by limo to the airport, where they boarded a private jet. Nikita lay back, her head throbbing with pain, as she contemplated the cold night sky before her. It was a clear night. Not a star in the sky.

Not a moon bright enough to illuminate the earth below.

Still, she swore that she could see Michael. Staring up at the heavens. Watching the jet disappear. As she was whisked out of his life. Once and for all.

Michael did watch the plane disappear. He stood there, the door to his black Mercedes wide open, his expression dark and unreadable.

There was a hole where his heart used to be.

His dull green eyes flickered briefly as he struggled to keep his runaway feelings under some semblance of control.

Oh, Christ. What was the point? He slumped against the frame of the car. Some pain went beyond tears.

This was such a pain.